Inertia Quotes

• Nothing happens until something moves.

  Albert Einstein

  Powerful, Moving, Inspiration

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• So many fail because they don't get started - they don't go. They don't overcome inertia. They don't begin.

  W. Clement Stone

  Inspirational, Motivational, Failure

  57 Copy quote

• The natural law of inertia: Matter will remain at rest or continue in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.

  W. Clement Stone

  Law, Lines, Matter

  15 Copy quote

• Probably 90 percent of our life decisions are powered by the twin engines of inertia and laziness.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Decision, Laziness, Twins

  A. J. Jacobs (2009). “The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

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• The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

  Marcel Proust

  Imagination, Mind, Slides

  Marcel Proust (1982). “Remembrance of Things Past: The captive. The fugitive. Time regained”, Vintage

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• All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success.

  Dorothea Brande

  Inspirational, Writing, Frustration

  Donald G. Carty, Dorothea Brande (2013). “How to Wake Up and Live: A Formula for Success That Works”, p.61, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Leaders must wake people out of inertia. They must get people excited about something they've never seen before, something that does not yet exist.

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Inspirational, People, Leader

  "3 Ways to Innovate in a Stagnant Environment". "The Business" with Brian Kenny, www.hbs.edu. March 11, 2014.

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• The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Love, Hate, Men

  Elbert Hubbard, Felix Shay (1912). “The Fra: A Journal of Affirmation”

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• Some people, in working towards a goal, find themselves seized by inertia when it comes time for action. If this should happen to you, despite the small graduated steps, then it is time to re-examine your goal. Consider how important it actually is and then either discard the goal and replace it with more suitable one or continue the steps with a renewed sense of the value of achieving it.

  Fitzhugh Dodson

  People, Goal, Important

  7 Copy quote

• Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

  Maurice Strong

  Powerful, Political, Affair

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• Life leaps like a geyser for those willing to drill through the rock of inertia.

  Alexis Carrel

  Life, Motivational, Positive

  102 Copy quote

• Healing is movement. Disease is inertia. If you put the body in motion, you will change.

  Gabrielle Roth

  Healing, Movement, Body

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• Life cannot be destroyed for good, neithercan history be brought entirely to a halt. A secret streamlet trickles on beneath the heavy lid of inertia and pseudo-events, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it. It may be a long process, but one day it must happen: the lid will no longer hold and will start to crack. This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and uniquesomething truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.

  Vaclav Havel

  Long, Historical, Secret

  6 Copy quote

• Seek out habits that help you overcome fear or inertia. Destroy those that do the opposite.

  Seth Godin

  Opposites, Overcoming, Helping

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• There is an enormous inertia that prevents people from change. You must always remember that it is impossible to make something better if you don't make it different - the converse is not true, of course. You cannot make something better unless it is different. And different scares the life out of so many people.

  Amar Bose

  People, Scare, Different

  14 Copy quote

• ... once you get up steam, you are carried helplessly along.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Get Up, Steam

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• Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.

  William James

  Life, Friendship, Littles

  William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I am adrenaline slammed into inertia: a fast car stuck in traffic.

  Gayle Forman

  Car, Stuck In Traffic, Adrenaline

  Gayle Forman (2013). “Just One Day”, p.228, Penguin

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• When you regularly take continuous action toward your most important goals, you activate the Momentum Principle of success. This principle says that although it may take tremendous amounts of energy to overcome inertia and get started initially, it then takes far less energy to keep going.

  Brian Tracy

  Goal, Important, Overcoming

  Brian Tracy (2008). “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time”, p.112, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• My opinion about Miller's experiments is the following. ... Should the positive result be confirmed, then the special theory of relativity and with it the general theory of relativity, in its current form, would be invalid. Experimentum summus judex. Only the equivalence of inertia and gravitation would remain, however, they would have to lead to a significantly different theory.

  Albert Einstein

  Special, Different, Would Be

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• Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
  To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.

  Alexander Pope

  Life, Peculiar, Earth

  'An Essay on Man' Epistle 2 (1733) l. 63

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• It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

  Rex Stout

  Choices, World, Force

  Rex Stout (2013). “Fer-de-Lance/The League of Frightened Men”, p.174, Bantam

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• We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.

  Maurice Strong

  Past, Needs, Management

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• If you work hard in real life, people tend to get in your way - either from inertia or prejudice - and they stop you achieving things. It's the worst thing about real life compared with sports, where you generally get what you deserve: if you're the fastest guy, you win; there are no other games being played.

  Daley Thompson

  Sports, Real, Hard Work

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• I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Real, Thinking, People

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